HOLIDAY: Mid-Mod 'Tiered' Trees

 

I have had a lot of fun (and a few mishaps!) creating these trees to share.
The tiered trees are made of wood, and are a recurring element in my holiday decor - showing up with new paint colors, new coverings, and new trim for the past FIVE years! (I've linked them all below the post)

You all know I love to re-use elements, as well as to find ways to use things differently than intended... like vinyl placemats, for example!

As soon as I began cutting shapes out of the vinyl placemats, I thought of making these. Three of the trees have circles of vinyl covering them, and the fourth tree is a skinny styrofoam tree that I gave a makeover to in 2020. This year, it has a new 'coat' of leaves cut from the placemats... and it's my favorite of all four! 

Let's get busy creating! 

DWK

Let's prep the materials we need for these two projects - a 2-tiered tree and the skinny leaf-covered tree:


The placemats I am using are vinyl, printed with a green geometric leaf print. I picked them up at Dollar Tree, and I cut them with a small pair of sharp scissors. 

The print offers varied shapes to cut out, as shown above - circles, half circles, four-leaf clusters, four-point stars, and individual leaves. Below you will see approximately how many pieces of each shape I used for each of the trees. (I'm not doing a tutorial on the 1-tier tree, but you can see how many half-circles it took!)

The other 'prep' work I did was to repaint all four trees with a custom mixed color that closely matches the vinyl placemats... the trees were dark green last year, and I didn't want that color showing underneath them. 

Cut your shapes first, then gather them with all of the other supplies you'll need.

You'll notice that some of the leaves on the right side of the photo aren't perfectly shaped - that's okay, they'll be applied low on the tree and be covered by the whole ones. I also cut some smaller leaves for the top part of the tree, where it gets smaller. The pattern on the vinyl made it easy to do!

'Leafy' Tree

Considering that this skinny tree was covered with fringed tissue when I bought it, then covered in strips cut from paint chips, this is an elegant upgrade!

Materials:

Tree (you can honestly use ANY kind of tree for this project)
Single leaves cut from vinyl placemat (I cut two sizes) . hot glue . scissors

Method:

1. Paint your trees a color similar to your vinyl, and let dry completely.

2. Lay out the single leaves that you've cut from the vinyl, according to size. This makes using the right size easier.

3. I started by gluing four of the largest leaves (the ones with a part missing) next to each other - no overlap - around the lower edge of the tree... gluing only the top third of the leaf to the styrofoam, and letting the other 2/3 hang below the styro.

You might need more leaves on your tree if it is wider at the bottom than mine. 

4. + 5. I glued four more of the large leaves in a row just above the first ones - offsetting them so they cover the spaces between the first leaves. Again, I glue only the top third of the leaf to the styro. This makes the leaves stick out a bit on the bottom, giving the tree more dimension.

6. Continue gluing the leaves on in the same pattern - place them side by side on one row, then on the next row up glue the leaves side by side and overlapping the previous row. 

7. This angle shows you how the leaves 'stick out' a bit when you only glue the top third down. 

8. When I had covered 2/3 of the tree, the leaves were too big to continue. To make smaller leaves, I cut off the white edging that appears on the larger ones. After cutting, I glued these on the tree in two rows, as high as I could go before they were too big to continue.

The next step isn't something I planned, but a solution to that tiny tree top that made gluing tiny leaves hard!


1. Using a half-round piece of cut vinyl, I made the tiniest cone you've ever seen! It's made by twisting the vinyl into a cone, exactly like the cone trees in my last post. One drop of hot glue holds it together, and I cut off a bit of excess vinyl so it had a flat bottom edge.

2. Another drop of hot glue holds the cone on top of the tree.

3. Now I had a surface big enough to add more of the small leaves to. I used five leaves glued side by side around the cone.

And I COULD have left it at that, but....

4. I cut four tinier leaves by cutting a leaf shape from one end of a regular leaf.

5. Then I glued those four leaves onto the tippy top of the tree.

That's a step you don't need to take, but I'm a sucker for details!

The finished tree really is cute - and if I had wanted to cut out a hundred more leaves, I would have done them ALL this way. I wasn't keen on that idea, so I came up with the circle idea for the tiered trees...

Tiered Trees

All three of the tiered trees are made in the same way, so I'm sharing how the 2-tiered tree above was put together. Once you see how it goes, you'll easily be able to adapt the tutorial for 1-tier and 3-tier trees. 

Materials:

Trees made with tiered levels - wood, ceramic, plastic, resin 
Round shapes cut from vinyl placemat . hot glue . scissors


Method:

Before we being, I need to point out an important aspect:

Make sure that as you glue the circles onto the tree, they are all turned the same way so the leaf pattern is consistent. On my example, all of the leaves are pointing up from the bottom and down from the top - if you don't watch for that repetition, you'll end up with leaves facing every direction.


We'll begin on the lowest tier of the tree...

1. Hold one round piece of vinyl against the tree, placing the top edge of the circle at the top edge of that tier - touching the bottom edge of the upper tier. (Check the leaf motif placement and adjust if it isn't centered.) Hold the vinyl circle with your thumb on one side and your index finger on the other so that the circle bends around the tree... doing this with each piece for just a minute helps it bend enough to make gluing easier. 

Lift the circle, then place hot glue on the tree where the center of the circle will sit, and replace the vinyl circle there. Then add a drop of hot glue to the tree where the rounded sides of the circle will sit, and press the vinyl into the glue to hold it in place.

2. Repeat step one on the opposite side of the tree, making sure the leaf motifs are facing the same direction as the other one.

3.  Add a third circle, making sure the pattern is aligned, to overlap and cover the edges of the first two circles already on the tree. 

4. Repeat that step on the opposite side of the tree.

5. You can see the scalloped bottom edge that the circles create - much prettier than a flat edge!

6.  The third and fourth circles will look like this when glued over the first and second ones.

Before we start on the top tier, I'll add another tip - based on the MISTAKE I made on mine!

In photo 6 above, you can see that there is clearly a 'front' side of the tree that shows a whole circle, and that the 'sides' of the tree reveal the layer beneath it... make sure that when you start gluing the vinyl circles onto the top tier, you replicate that placement. Meaning that the top tier will have a full circle placed exactly above the one on the lower tier, covering the two side circles. 

7. AFTER making sure that you're placing the first two circles on the sides of your tree to line up with the tier below this, glue them into place one at a time.

8. I found that attaching the top center of the circle with glue, then bending the sides around the top to help shape it, helps the vinyl adhere best. Placing a line of glue down the areas that the edges of the circle will touch held them most securely.

9. Attach the second circle the same way, on the opposite side of the tree.

THIS is where I blew it - my circle placement on the top tier doesn't align with the placement on the lower tier. It's not the end of the world, but I want you to avoid my blunders!

10. + 11. Now you will apply the last two circles to the top tier - making sure they are aligned with the full circles showing on the lower tier. 

12. When I discovered my mistake, I glued on two more circles over the top of the existing ones to try and fix it. 

13. The circles on the top tier didn't come to a point because of the angle of the tree, so I made another small cone with a scrap of vinyl, and glued it on the top. This time, I did make sure that the pattern lined up with the tiers below!

14. The finished 2-tier tree. You can see how the basic method of four circles per tier works, and is applicable to any size. 

Regarding my mistake:
All I can say is that art and craft are not a science. I just play around with stuff and see if an idea works... Did Deb make a 'test' tree using this method BEFORE she photographed the assembly of the final version? NO, Deb did not. So now I'm eating crow and reminding myself to pay closer attention when I am creating!

In any case, playing around with art supplies is really the fun part. As a visual merchandising & display designer, writer, and speaker for 45 years, I have always said "It's called disPLAY, not disWORK!" - and creating your own seasonal home decor should be fun, too.


Propped with some vintage minty green glass ornaments and white ceramic vases and candle holders, they will combine beautifully with the cone trees and some others in my collection. I'm thinking as a table centerpiece! 

The shapes of them remind me of the snow-covered, stop-motion animated ones in those great 1960's/70's Rankin-Bass Christmas specials - Rudolph, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, and The Year Without a Santa Claus. I loved those as a kid! (Oh, who am I kidding? I STILL love them!) 

Related Previous Content:

Tiered Trees  2021 . 2022 . 2023 . 2024

Leafy Tree 2020

Christmas,Christmas Decor,Christmas Decor Themes,holiday,Mid Mod Holiday,mid century modern style,mid-century modern inspired,DIY,home decor, Mid Mod Tiered Trees.